Whitman S Ecstatic Union

First Published in 2005. Whitman's Ecstatic Union rereads the first three editions of Leaves of Grass within the context of a nineteenth-century antebellum evangelical culture of conversion. Though Whitman intended to write a new American Bible and inaugurate a religion, contemporary scholarship has often ignored the religious element in his poetry. But just as evangelists sought the redemption of America through the reconstruction of individual subjects in conversion, Leaves of Grass sought to redeem the nation by inducing ecstatic, regenerating experiences in its readers. Whitman's Ecstatic Union explores the ecstasy of conversion as a liminal moment outside of language and culture, and-employing Althusser's model of ideological interpellation and anthropological models of religious ritual-shows how evangelicalism remade subjects by inducing ecstasy and instilling new narratives of identity. The book analyzes Whitman's historical relationship to preaching and conversion and reads the 1855 Song of Myself as a conversion narrative. A focus on the 1856 edition and the poem To You explores the sacred seductions at the heart of Whitman's poetry. Crossing Brooklyn Ferry and Whitman's vision of a world of perfect miracles are then connected to a conception of universal affection, uncannily paralleling Jonathan Edward's ideal of love to being in general. A conclusion looks toward the transformations of Whitman's vision in the 1860 edition.

The field of theopoetics explores the ways in which we “make God” (present)—particularly through language. This book explores questions of theopoetics as they relate to the central poetry of the American Sublime. It offers a fresh, theological engagement with what literary critic Harold Bloom terms the American religion (transcendentalism: Emerson’s homespun mysticism). Specifically, it seeks to rehabilitate Emerson’s concept of self-reliance from the charge of gross egoism, by situating it in the context of normative mysticisms Eastern and Western. It undertakes a more poetic approach to reading theologically-inflected poetry, by exegeting four poets collectively constituting Bloom’s American religious “canon”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, and Hart Crane. It utilizes a modified version of the ancient fourfold allegorical mode of reading Scripture, to draw out theological dimensions of four quintessential texts (Nature, “Song of Myself,” “Sunday Morning,” “Lachrymae Christi”), in order to offer a more imaginative way of reading imaginative writing. Building on Emerson’s contention, “just as there is creative writing, there is creative reading,” and Bloom’s claim, “a theory of poetry . . . must be poetry, before it can be of any use in interpreting poems,” it demonstrates the unique, viable ways in which poems are able to “do” theology—and perform or embody theopoetic truths.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was the most influential American writer of the nineteenth century. Poets such as Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Wallace Stevens descend from Emerson, as do thinkers such as John Dewey and William James. This volume of critical interpretations focuses on Emerson's Essays: First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844), which encompass some of his most important works-"History," "Self-Reliance," "Circles," "The Poet," and "Experience" among others. These essays exemplify Emerson's distinctively rich prose and his radical affirmation of the strength of the individual. The analyses and appreciations collected here place Emerson's essays in the context of literary and intellectual history, grapple with the implications of his epigrams and tropes, and link his shifts of perspective and tone to the changes in Emerson's life. Together they illuminate the complexity and scope of the seminal works of America's most influential writer and thinker. Book jacket.

Examines the literary period of the nineteenth century known as the American Renaissance that includes the work of Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe and others.

In this compelling, accessible examination of one of America's greatest cultural and literary figures, Robert Leigh Davis details the literary and social significance of Walt Whitman's career as a nurse during the American Civil War. Davis shows how the concept of "convalescence" in nineteenth-century medicine and philosophy—along with Whitman's personal war experiences—provide a crucial point of convergence for Whitman's work as a gay and democratic writer. In his analysis of Whitman's writings during this period—Drum-Taps, Democratic Vistas, Memoranda During the War, along with journalistic works and correspondence—Davis argues against the standard interpretation that Whitman's earliest work was his best. He finds instead that Whitman's hospital writings are his most persuasive account of the democratic experience. Deeply moved by the courage and dignity of common soldiers, Whitman came to identify the Civil War hospitals with the very essence of American democratic life, and his writing during this period includes some of his most urgent reflections on suffering, sympathy, violence, and love. Davis concludes this study with an essay on the contemporary medical writer Richard Selzer, who develops the implications of Whitman's ideas into a new theory of medical narrative.